1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a goods display apparatus having a mechanism enabling shelves to be horizontal for loading and for transfer, and enabling the loaded shelves to be subsequently tilted to a predetermined angle of inclination for display and feeding of the goods on the shelves. The apparatus is especially suited for the business of retailing bread and bakery products.
2. The Prior Art
The distribution and retailing of bread, pastries and similar goods has been done with cardboard boxes or plastic or wire cases in combination with fixed store shelving. The factory loads the boxes or cases with bread, the loaded boxes or cases are placed on a truck and then unloaded at a retailing site. The shelves are then manually stocked from the boxes or cases. The bread is excessively handled, bags are unintentionally opened, bread is stacked upon itself and some bread is squashed. The product loss and labor required is a significant portion of the cost to a consumer, when bread and bakery goods are purchased from a fixed shelf.
A more advanced alternative is a plastic or wire case in which the bread is placed on end in the case, much like beverage bottles. The cases are then stocked on edge at a retailers and consumers pull out loaves of bread. Again, the bread packages tend to damage each other and when a customer pulls out one loaf, several adjacent loaves may fall on the floor. This type of arrangement eliminates the step of transfer from case to shelf by store labor.
One of the problems of the practice of using cases is that people steal the cases, or they keep the cases. People take the cases home and use them for car parts, camping, sporting goods, beer and soda drinks, magazine boxes and the like. People also take the heavy duty commercial plastic and wire trays and use them for garage shelves and other purposes. The shrinking of cases and trays is both internal and external. The actual cost to a retail customer will vary from location to location and goods to goods, but one survey came up with an opinion that the cost of case shrinkage in the dairy industry comes to 4.cent. per gallon of milk retailed.
Businesses using cases are being offered and are considering 3-sided cases that do not nest, in order to combat case shrinkage. Regardless, emptied cases have to be inventoried, sorted out and returned to the source of goods.
A further practice uses a wheeled cart that has fixed horizontal shelves. The shelves are loaded at the factory and the cart is transferred to a retailing site while loaded with goods. The consumer buys goods directly out of the cart. Typically, each cart shelf has one layer of goods and the packages do not squash one another during transit. There are no cases to lose, but the cart must be returned for reloading with goods. The problem with these carts has been that the shelves are fixed and that consumers pick out the front rows of goods but will not stick their arms into the cart to grasp and pull out the back rows. Consequently, the cart is not emptied and must be manually emptied by the retailer's employees or the cart is sent back to the factory with unsold goods.
Another attempt has been the use of a cart having a fixed inclined shelf that will self-feed bread and pastry products downward to a front side from which the consumer withdraws selected goods. It has been found that loaves of bread collapse and become shorter under compression during transit. The goods also jump off the shelf and fall out of the cart during transit; the only way to prevent "jump out" is to use a very high front barrier which in turn requires shelves be spaced apart the thickness of the goods plus the height of the high barrier. Further, the individual shelves are very difficult to load, and can only be effectively loaded from the back.
Attempts have been made to devise a cart having a shelf that can be tilted from horizontal to inclined. Past efforts have been unsuccessful because no one has been able to devise a mechanism that can easily tilt loaded shelves. The forces have been tremendous. For example, a cart that is configured to have a shelf four loaves wide and two loaves deep at 11/2 pounds per loaf has 12 pounds of bread per shelf. The shelf and bread support be it a removable tray or a fixed tray, probably weigh 5 pounds. In the U.S. market, a good height has been found to be eleven layers. Eleven filled shelves weigh about 190 pounds. The typical grocery store or bread store clerk is a high school student, and many times a young woman. These people have not had the strength to tilt a full load of bread and no one has been able to devise a cart enabling them to do it.
The foregoing problems apply to other goods to greater or lesser degrees. Examples of other goods are motor oil, produce, boxed goods, bottled goods and the like; the problems are not just restricted to bread even though bread is the goods upon which this effort has been focused.